I’m not sure what kind of regulations the different countries around the world have regarding accounting and invoices, but at least here in Germany we have quite strict rules on what information have to be included in an invoice (especially if they contain VAT statements). I noticed that many companies generate/send very amateurish looking and almost useless invoices. Many invoices lack basic information like invoice date, invoice number or recipient.
I’m really wondering what’s so hard in generating complete invoices. Please add at least the following information to an invoice, especially if you accept international customers:
- Vendor name and complete address
- Recipient name and complete address
- Invoice number
- Invoice date
- Ordered products / services and their price(s)
- Total price
Companies invest so much time and money in getting their website, product design, letterhead and business cards right, but many absolutely ignore things like invoices. Such documents should use the corporate design and branding just like all other items that are visible to the customer. No, a simple Excel file with some numbers is not enough.
4 Comments
Equally unacceptable is the “pay me or die” scribbled in crayon on looseleaf wrapped around a brick…
I completely agree with you. I use the service http://www.blinksale.com and it works great and looks professional. I do consulting and I’ve found their invoices easy to use.
By the way, I love SmartInspect. For a long time I avoided using it because I felt GExpert’s SendDebug was good enough but after having to debug services I’ve found it a great tool!
Blinksale looks nice (and feels like a 37signal product). If I ever have a need for such a service, I would probably start using it, too.
Great to see that you like SmartInspect! I agree that service applications benefit the most from using SmartInspect, because there is no other way to get any feedback from the application.